‘Completely unexpected’: Antarctic sea ice may be in terminal decline due to rising Southern Ocean salinity

By Alessandro Silvano, NERC Independent Research Fellow in Oceanography, University of Southampton

The ocean around Antarctica is rapidly getting saltier at the same time as sea ice is retreating at a record pace. Since 2015, the frozen continent has lost sea ice similar to the size of Greenland. That ice hasn’t returned, marking the largest global environmental change during the past decade.

This finding caught us off guard – melting ice typically makes the ocean fresher. But new satellite data shows the opposite is happening, and that’s a big problem. Saltier water at the ocean surface behaves differently…

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